Grad School Story (Part 2)

Okay, really, really! I promised I'd update that same day, but well... then I got wind of a few scores I didn't know before then, so needless to say that studying took priority. The good news is that finals, and my second-to-last semester as an undergrad are now DONE! And what better way to honor the occasion than to talk a little bit more about where I'm hoping to go after that.

I wrapped up my last post with a bit of a cliffhanger - essentially, the professor at Penn State had said he was very much interested in having me there, but that funding to attend was going to be an issue. Still, he had a few grant proposals out that could fund me, and he said he'd keep me in the loop as to any developments.

About... say, 2 weeks after this, I got another email from the professor. It turned out that the grant had not been funded and the money was (most likely) not there for me to go. He did say that the sponsor of the project was hoping to try again, but I could tell that he was not optimistic about that playing out in my favor.

It goes without saying from my point of view that this was quite a setback. Perhaps the biggest setback at this point was that Penn State, and this professor, were well above and beyond the responses that I got from any other school. To have what seemed to be a promising lead dry up on me was definitely a blow. However, if there's one thing that I've learned, it's that life has this really funny way of making things work out.

I took the time to consider my options - Should I keep searching and pushing at other schools and hope that I got somewhere? Should I just abandon the grad school track alltogether and start looking for a job? The possibilities were pretty broad.

A weird series of circumstances led me to the answer to this question. In the process of trying to do a homework assignment for another class, I was put in contact with someone whom I did an independent research assignment with a few years ago in the Atmospheric Sciences department. Now, Atmospheric Science has been a interest passion of mine from a young age. The thing is that I remembered looking into the program a while back when considering a change of major. There were few jobs, the ones that did exist were highly competitive, and even if you got the job, it didn't pay well (< 40k), even with a masters. Figuring I could start ~60k with a bachelors in engineering in an equally interesting field, I chose to stick to that path.

Well, I decided to look this statistic up again from census data. Much to my surprise, the job market for atmospheric scientists has exploded, mostly due to the increasing reliance on climate trends and the effects on business in this economy. What originally was a highly competitive, 40k on the high end field now didn't have nearly enough people and was paying on average 80-100k (mean, not starting). I admit that the statistics did not specify WHERE these people worked, but they did say that the demand for them was increasing very quickly, and expected to continue that trend for the next several years.

I took this as my cue to look into the atmospheric sciences programs at other schools (including here, despite my lack of desire to remain), to see what my options were there, and what that sort of change in focus could mean. And now that it's approaching far-too-early AM, I am going to wrap this one up here. Part 3 should be the conclusion of everything as it stands, and will hopefully come tomorrow!